The electronification of social responsibility proceeds apace. Pressure grows for increased use of ignition interlocks to keep people from driving drunk.
The interlock, not a new idea, consists of a tube into which a driver must blow before starting the car, the tube being connected to an alcohol sensor and a computer that will not let the car start if the alcohol reading is too high. Right now the cutoff used by police is a blood-alcohol content of 0.08.
The idea is that people convicted of DUI would have to use interlocks and therefore would not be hazards to the public. The principle is similar to that of the electronic ankle bracelets that notify police when a nonviolent offender goes somewhere he shouldn’t.
In the past, critics said interlocks wouldn’t work because drunks could find a way to outwit them. For example, a drunk could have someone else blow into the tube, or go sober to a bar and leave the car idling while he drank.
Well, maybe, but interlocks have gotten a lot smarter than they were. One manufacturer of the devices today is LifeSafer Inc (lifesafer.com). A lot of thought has gone into the device. Its model FC100 has a fuel-cell based sensor that responds only to alcohol and incorporates a long list of techniques to keep a drunk from fooling it.
The user can be required to hum (many of these features are programmable) while blowing into the device. This, says LifeSafer, “deters techniques utilized to mimic human breath or to absorb alcohol.” The device can require random retests while the car is in operation. “Breath test refusal or failure is recorded and sanctions are imposed, including honking of the car’s horn, [which deter] drinking after completing a sober start and [leaving the] vehicle idling at bars.” Furthermore, it can be set not to let the car start at all between certain hours. This is useful if the court decides that the offender can drive to work and back, with an hour added for shopping, but otherwise must stay off the road.
For people with a history of drunken driving, the idea makes sense. That is, it is reasonable to suspect that if chronic drunks blow .08, they will continue drinking until incapacitated. However, in today’s surveillance-prone society, there is the problem of the slippery slope. For example, New Mexico in 2004 defeated a bill that would have required all new cars to be equipped with interlocks. Everyone, not just known drunks, would have had to blow into the tube to start the car.
Had this passed, it would have caused technological punishment of potential, not real, misbehavior. Note that alcohol affects different people differently.
Some people get visibly drunk well below .08, and some don’t at higher levels.
Interlocks are not nearlythe only attempt to impose responsibility by technological means. There is BioBouncer, a proposed system to detect potential troublemakers in bars. Automatic cameras in watering holes will use face-recognition software to compare the faces of customers to a list of known problem causers. Again, this is penalizing possible, not actual, misbehavior.
Such systems are not in widespread use against the general public, and may never be. Yet there is a growing temptation to use technology in all its arbitrariness to make decisions it is not well-suited to make. GPS devices can track your teenager’s car, cameras look for “suspicious behavior.” Well and good, but there should be a limit to how much machines can watch and accuse — especially when they penalize what people might do, but haven’t.
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